For Women's History Month, we're celebrating outstanding women cookbook authors

By Leslie Brenner

Happy International Women’s Day!

I’ve long believed that when it comes to writing cookbooks, women have a serious edge: Most of my favorite all-time cookbooks were written by women. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by some of my favorite female authors, and celebrating their achievements.

We’ll spotlight the authors in various ways: sometimes by honoring an entire long, distinguished career; other times presenting a newer author with a wonderful recent title, or maybe telling you about someone who didn’t write many books, but gave us one or two truly great ones. We’ll also feature standalone reviews of cookbooks by women.

In the past, we have honored a number of our favorite women authors in this way. They include:

• Diana Kennedy (read the story)

• Najmieh Batmanglij (read the story)

• Andrea Nguyen (read the story)

• Toni Tipton-Martin (read the story)

• Dorie Greenspan (read the story)

Build your collection

The first spotlight is coming shortly. Meanwhile, we have collected many of our favorite cookbooks by women in a mini-shop at Bookshop: “Women Have a History of Writing the Best Cookbooks.” We’re thrilled to invite you to browse the shop. Treat yourself (or a cookbook-loving friend) to one or more of the marvelous volumes. In doing so, you’ll be supporting women authors, independent booksellers and Cooks Without Borders (where it will be much appreciated).

Happy browsing, and happy Women’s History Month!

Outstanding cookbook author Toni Tipton-Martin puts history at the center of the American table

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

It is history itself that animates the books of Toni Tipton-Martin, a culinary historian, writer, editor and cook who has become a powerful force for amplifying, celebrating and honoring the voices of Black cooks throughout American history.

Toni Tipton-Martin / Photograph by Pableaux Johnson

In 2015, Tipton-Martin published her award-winning The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African-American Cookbooks, which she followed in 2019 with Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking.

[Read more about Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee.]

Its pages are filled with delicious recognition of the contribution of African American cooks and chefs — and include some of our favorite recipes of the last year. I’m forever attached to Jubilee’s Pickled Shrimp, to Tipton-Martin’s Country-Style Potato Salad and to her Pork Chops in Lemon-Caper Sauce.

Pickled shrimp prepared from a recipe in ‘Jubilee’ by Toni Tipton-Martin

Its historical depth is just as appetizing — for instance a deep dive into green gumbo — gumbo z’herbes — that inspired an upcoming Cooks Without Borders story.

In September, Tipton-Martin — who began her career at the Los Angeles Times, and later led food coverage at the Cleveland Plain Dealer as its food editor — was named editor in chief of Cook’s Country.

'Jubilee,' 'Japanese Home Cooking' and 'American Sfoglino' are among the 2020 IACP Cookbook Award winners

The International Association of Culinary Professionals announced the winners of its 2020 Book Awards on Saturday, including its prestigious Cookbook Awards.

Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking (Clarkson Potter) won the top prize, Book of the Year, as well as the award for best cookbook in the American category. Francis Lam was the editor.

In our June review, we called Jubilee “deliciously inspiring,” discussing and including recipes for Tipton-Martin’s Layered Garden Salad, Sautéed Greens and Country-Style Potato Salad. In an earlier story, we raved about her recipe for Pickled Shrimp — which is one of our favorite recipes of the year to date.

Pickled Shrimp from Toni Tipton-Martin’s ‘Jubilee’ is one of our favorite recipes published in 2020.

Sonoko Sakai’s Japanese Home Cooking: Simple Meals, Authentic Flavors (Roost Books) won the prize for best new cookbook in the International category. Sara Berchholz was the editor.

“If you are looking to dive (or tip-toe) into Japanese cooking and seeking one great book to guide you, you can do no better than this delightful volume,” we wrote in our review (also in June). We offered up Sakai’s recipes for Okonomiyaki, Cucumber Sunomono and Koji-Marinated Salmon as evidence.

Okonomiyaki from ‘Japanese Home Cooking’ by Sonoko Sakai

While we haven’t gotten around to reviewing American Sfoglino yet, we do have a story about it in the works, and taking a deep dive into Funke’s pasta-making technique has forever changed the way we’ll approach making pasta by hand. The book won in the Chefs & Restaurants category. A mini-review will be coming soon.

Other titles winning IACP top honors include Pastry Love: A Baker’s Journal of Favorite Recipes by Joanne Chang (Baking category); The Complete Baking Book for Young Chefs by the Editors at America’s Test Kitchen (Children, Youth & Family category); On the Hummus Route by Ariel Rosenthal, Orly Peli-Bronshtein and Dan Alexander (Culinary Travel category) and Milk Street: The New Rules: Recipes That Will Change the Way You Cook by Christopher Kimball (General category). Find a complete list of winners and finalists here.

Congratulations to all the IACP winners and finalists!

The 10 most delicious things I made from cookbooks during the pandemic: Part I

At Cooks Without Borders, The Great Confinement has been a time for (among other things) deep dives into cookbooks — focusing mostly on volumes published within the last year, but also on cookbooks from a few years back that we hadn’t yet had a chance to explore.

The riches we’ve found in the pages of the best of them has been absolutely exhilarating, opening up entire new worlds to us.

Here are the first 5 of my 10 favorite dishes from the dozens of cookbook recipes I’ve tested and tasted over the last six months. What they have in common — besides their cravability factor — is that they are all really fun to cook.

Chicken Musakhan from Sami Tamimi’s ‘Falastin’

Traditionally during olive-oil pressing season to celebrate the freshly-pressed oil and served with pebble-textured taboon bread, the Palestinian dish known as Chicken Musakhan is now a year-round favorite in the Levant. “It’s a dish to eat with your hands and with your friends,” writes Sami Tamimi in Falastin,” served from one pot or plate, for everyone to then tear at some of the bread and spoon on the chicken and topping for themselves.” To make it, toss a whole quartered bird with plenty of cumin and sumac and other spices, then roast it and layer it on crisped pieces of torn pita with a lot of long-cooked, sumac-and-cumin-loaded sliced red onions, fried pine nuts and parsley. Spoon over with the roasting juices from the chicken, drizzle on more olive oil, dust with more sumac, and invite everyone to tear in. The dish is stunningly good.

Why we love cooking it: It’s liberating to use all those spices with such abandon.

We reviewed Falastin, which Tamimi wrote with Tara Wigley, in July.

Anjali Pathak’s Charred Baby Eggplants

These melty-soft baby eggplants with a coconutty, spicy filling come from Anjali Pathak’s 2015 book, The Indian Family Kitchen: Classic Dishes for a New Generation. Sizzled fresh curry leaves make it really special. We spotlighted this dish — finished with dabs of yogurt — in an an August story about eggplants.

Why we love cooking it: The topping is really fun to make, beginning with cooking the mustard seeds in oil till they jump out of the pan, and using the curry leaves (which freeze really well, so if you get your hands on some, buy extra).

Yangzhou Fried Rice from Fuchsia Dunlop’s ‘Every Grain of Rice’

Enticing, satisfying and fun to make, this Yangzhou Fried Rice from Dunlop’s superb 2012 book Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking is a dish is a highly craveable classic — one that I’d be happy to eat every week.

Why we love cooking it: Mastery! It’s an ideal recipe to use if you want to learn fried rice technique, as it’s the best (and least fussy) method we’ve found so far. After you try it once, there’s lots of room for ingredient improvisation. A seasoned wok is required.

Our review of the book is coming soon.

‘Jubilee’ Pickled Shrimp from Toni Tipton-Martin’s award-winning book

The pickled shrimp from Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking has been a point of joy for us several times during the pandemic, including last weekend, when a friend requested its presence at a socially distanced Labor Day picnic. It’s shown above before being pickled overnight. We reviewed the book in June 2020.

Why we love cooking it: The technique for pickling seafood in vinegar has its roots in Spanish escabeche. A recipe Tipton-Martin found in Savannah, Georgia inspired this one. Once you’ve made it once, you can play with the herbs and spices: This I upped the pickling spice a bit and added a bit more tarragon. Or even run with the basic escabeche idea and use what it’s taught us to pickled fin fish (snapper would be great) or scallops.

Rose, Cumin and Apricot Sablés from Camille Fourmont’s ‘La Buvette’

Crushed rosebuds and cumin bring a beautifully fragrant and savory aspect to Camille Fourmont’s spin on the classic French sablé cookie; dried apricots add a delightful chewy high note. Though Fourmont credits pastry superstar Pierre Hermé with having dreamt up the flavor combo, it is she who put them together in a sablé. Super buttery and tender, they are exquisite. We reviewed the book they’re from, La Buvette: Recipes and Wine Notes from Paris, in August.

Why we love cooking it: Playing with dried flower buds is a treat, and it’s always fun to slice and bake dough that’s been chilling in a log in the fridge.

RECIPE: Rose, Cumin and Apricot Sablés

RECIPE: ‘Jubilee’ Pickled Shrimp

RECIPE: Yangzhou Fried Rice

RECIPE: Anjali Pathak’s Charred Baby Eggplants

RECIPE: Chicken Musakhan

Celebrating two centuries of African American cooking, Tipton-Martin’s ‘Jubilee’ earns a coveted Beard Award

A piece of culinary news that in less turbulent times would have made a much bigger noise got a bit drowned out last week: Toni Tipton-Martin’s deliciously inspiring Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking won the 2020 James Beard Award for the best American cookbook. It’s a shame the moment was missed because a robust, thoughtful and groundbreaking celebration of African-American cooking and culture could not be more timely.

A formidable scholar, culinary historian and cultural historian as well as a cook, Tipton-Martin won her first Beard Award four years ago. That was for The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks — an annotated bibliography of the author’s collection of rare, historical African-American cookbooks, published in 2015. 

To create Jubilee, Tipton-Martin culled more than 100 recipes from those books; collectively they represent her curation of seminal African-American cooking. Being honored with the Beard Award honor puts them squarely in the center of the American table. 

At Cooks Without Borders, we had just started cooking from Jubilee when Covid shut us in mid-March. I was eager to explore the enticing recipes, sticking Post-its on scores of recipes for which I couldn’t yet procure the necessary ingredients: Deviled Crab, Okra Gumbo, Peach-Buttermilk Ice Cream. 

But there were plenty of dishes I was able to make, and with delicious results: a Biscuit-Topped Chicken Pot Pie, the Savannah Pickled Shrimp I wrote about last month, wonderful Sautéed Greens that felt like the best thing imaginable for our immune systems during a pandemic.

As I flipped through, enjoying the beautiful photos by Jerrelle Guy, I was taken with Tipton-Martin’s stories, and her background. Like me, she grew up in Southern California (we were both born in L.A., six months apart). Just out of college, she joined The Los Angeles Times as a food and nutrition writer (I served there as Food Editor 23 years later).  

She grew up in the tony Baldwin Hills area of Los Angeles, a neighborhood she describes as  “home to the black elite — doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, and white-collar professionals.” There, at the home her mother treated like an “urban farm,” she thrilled to tender lettuces, avocados and California stone fruits plucked from the garden. 

Some of my favorite recipes in the book are very vegetable-forward: those greens; a delightful Layered Salad with Garlic and Herb Dressing; an old-fashioned Country-Style Potato Salad that took me back to my own Southern California childhood (it is nearly identical to the one my mom used to make). 

Until she wrote The Jemima Code, Tipton-Martin felt isolated as a food writer. “My culinary heritage — and the larger story of African American food that encompasses the middle class and the well-to-do — was lost in a world that confined the black experience to poverty, survival, and soul food,” she explains in her intro. Jubilee “broadens the African American food story. It celebrates the enslaved and the free, the working class, the middle class, and the elite.” 

For me, In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, exploring a powerful African American cookbook has taken on a different quality; it feels more urgent. A month ago, I was skimming through, enjoying, cooking, hanging out with the book. Now I’m more focused — on Tipton-Martin’s intentions, on the stories of the cooks, on the ingredients and what they mean, on the origins of dishes. 

I’ve learned, for instance, that gumbo, from the beginning, was all about okra; in several West African languages the word for okra is gombo. The vegetable, Tipton-Martin writes, is  “mucilaginous when sliced and cooked. Devotees love that slime; it thickens gumbo and gives the stew body.” Native American Filé, also known as sassafras flour, came into the gumbo picture as a thickener later, as did roux, which came from French and Creole cooks. “After that, soups thickened with any combination of these ingredients started to bear the name ‘gumbo.’”

Now I really need to cook that gumbo I’d been eyeing for months. Yesterday I ventured out to the supermarket, where I’d only just spotted okra a few days before. It was gone, and so was the crabmeat. So the gumbo will have to wait. 

But I don’t have to wait to recommend Jubilee — not just to cooks and people with a passion for food, but to everyone who wants to better understand African-American culture.

In an interview in March with Saveur magazine, Tipton-Martin was asked what she hopes people will gain from the book besides the beautiful recipes and scrumptious food. “One answer,” she said, “would be to determine what we can all do in our own spheres of influence to bring down the barriers constructed through the stereotypes that divide us.” 

Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking, by Toni Tipton-Martin, Clarkson Potter, $35

RECIPE: Layered Garden Salad

RECIPE: Country Style Potato Salad

RECIPE: Sautéed Greens